Diane's Discoveries

He's Got Mail

I just discovered another useful educator's site for you to check out...Jim Wenzloff's: I've Got Mail. Here's a portion of a post he wrote in March; I like his reference to dyslexia and about not being a good writer:

I’ve got mail. This week was a stellar week. Why, because I got mail! I have an audience! It’s great to know that someone actually reads and thinks about what I write. I'm excited about the getting feedback on my writing. Imagine how students must feel when they get feedback on their writing. They have to be excited and motivated to write more. Just ask the teachers who are publishing their students’ work on the web. (I list just a few in a previous post.) My simple reaction to getting mail is why I think authentic audience is so important to our students.

I’m not a good writer. I struggle to have my sentences fit together and make sense. I am a terrible speller and really think I have a mild for of dyslexia. I can spell a word correctly and then type in incorrectly. My mind doesn’t react to the misspelling. My mind also races ahead of what I’m writing. This results in poor or malformed sentences and paragraphs. I’m sharing this not because I want you to feel sorry for me, but to reinforce what can happen with on-line publishing. This blog is making me a better writer. I am thinking about what I want to write and spending time trying to craft what I want to say. If I’m lucky, I may write as well as some of the junior high students by the end of the school year.

An authentic audience has made a difference in my writing. You can make a difference with your students by helping them publish their writing. They too can share the joy of getting feedback. Help spread the joy by joining other educators who have volunteered to give feedback to K-12 students on their writing. I have about 50 educators who are willing to spend fifteen minutes a month giving feedback to students. All you have to do is when a teacher request feedback for her/his students is to go to their blog and write two or three sentences about one students writing. If your busy that week you don’t have to give feedback, wait until the next request. To volunteer to give feedback to students, send an e-mail to jim@misd.net and put feedback in the subject line. As part of the group you can also request feedback by sending an e-mail to the same address.

Newspaper Acknowledges e-savvy educators

I feel that with educational blogging we are on the threshold of new directions for education, one which will be an exciting tool for special educators, particularly for helping those with learning difficulties. Will Richardson linked to a newpaper article by Cynthia Kopkowski, staff writer for the Palm Beach Post. The article is interesting reporting; I've only quoted a portion of the article:

Chris Burnett, a self-described technophobic language-arts teacher in Macomb County, used a blog for the first time this past year to engage her students.

Rather than hang their writing around the room, she's publishing the musings of one of her eighth-grade classes on her blog. Readers can share their thoughts in postings on the blog.

"The kids got feedback from England, from the United States, from Bermuda," Burnett said. "That's what got them hooked. They wanted to keep writing better in hopes that they would get positive feedback."

She figured out an effective system for thwarting the primary concern that keeps most teachers from blogging about their classes: protecting students from predators. None of Burnett's students' names appear. Instead, they use identification numbers. All feedback comes to her e-mail first, and she determines whether it is appropriate for posting.

Source: More and more e-savvy educators using blogs.

ADD: A Badge of Honor?

About a year and a half ago, I had the pleasure of meeting and corresponding with David Warlick by email, and David became one of my Featured Presenters at the 2004 TRLD conference. I had more time to talk with him at the 2005 TRLD conference and had just a glimpse of the treasure of knowledge that David has to share. In reading his blog, I found this entry:

A Badge of Honor

A while back, Steve Dembo, of Teach42, and I did a joint podcast about A.D.D. (Attention Deficit Disorder). We had discovered that we were both afflicted with the problem through our e-mail correspondence (ADDers can usually recognize other ADDers), so we inteviewed each other through iChat AV and Steve recorded it and publised the interview as a Teach42 podcast, Two podcasts for the price of one!.

The conclusion that we both came to, as a result of our talk, was that A.D.D. did have a flip side that gave us some advantages under certain conditions. I don't know what creativity is. It seems like some magical knack that some people have. To me, it's just having a mind that doesn't travel in a straight line. Ideas float around and seem almost repelled by each other, resisting my lining them up into a correctly bubbled in answer sheet.

However, I do easily see patterns in those ideas floating around, and when I describe those patterns, it's said to be creative. It's just a better way of thinking. It has served me quite well, that and the fact that I was smart enough to marry a lazerbeam focused business major.

What brought this up was an article that Ian Jukes pointed me to in his blog, The Committed Sardine.

Sam Grossman grew up thinking he was stupid, lazy and irresponsible? "a screw-up," as he puts it. Struggling with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), he constantly disappointed his parents and teachers alike. So how, at the age of 24, did he end up as a partner in a Massachusetts real-estate firm? He credits an unlikely source. "The key to my success," he says, was his ADHD.

David's latest book is to be published this month: "Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century"
ISBN 1-58683-130-5

Link: Exactly 2¢ Worth -- David Warlick